“Whatever works”

I remember back with Mr. E was a newborn and I decided to do whatever worked to make life easier, smoother, et cetera. Perhaps I’ve lost some of that as he grew and we developed a routine.

Well his sleep issues and his desire to nurse a lot at night has been rough. Really rough. If A goes to him he just looks to the door for me. When she brings him to me he shows his excitement that maybe there will be milk involved. All of this has led to some pretty funky sleep arraignments and with no end in sight for his night waking/nursing, I was not okay with indefinitely playing musical beds.

We have two cribs one in his room and one in ours. This has more to do with the fact that we moved into my parent’s house and they already had a crib for my nephews and we came with our own. It made sense to keep one in our room for when there were guests/cousins needing E’s room. I recently had the idea to remove one side of the crib in our room and tether it to our bed, thus making space for him to sleep right next to me, but not be in our bed (if we had a king sized bed, he’d just be in the bed, but it’s tight in our queen). We’ve slept two nights like this and I am very pleased with the lack of up and down, and also to be sleeping next to A instead of in the next room with E.

That’s a really great “work-around” or I guess we’re now calling them “hacks.” They sell those things and I can’t remember the name but I know that they are like $400-500. It looks like you did a great job with the tethering and if y’all sleep better, that’s what counts.

BTW: We have a king-sized bed with the baby and the two of us and pushed up next to it we have a twin that our 4 year-old sleeps in. All the mattresses are on the floor which looks totally college-dorm but it makes it safer for the baby and it actually makes the bed really comfy (just harder to stand up from). And our son has a queen-sized bed in his room and he can choose to sleep in there anytime.